Easter Year Year C
Lectionary citations
Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26 or Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18 or Luke 24:1-12
Additional reflection on John 20:1-18 is available in Sermon Seeds Year C from The Pilgrim Press.
Worship resources for Easter Sunday Year C can be found at Worship Ways.
Note: Easter Sunday begins a special Mission 4/1 Earth series of preaching reflections on the lectionary texts for the Easter season, written by professors at our United Church of Christ seminaries. Weekly Seeds Bible studies for these weeks will be adapted from these reflections and available each week at http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/weekly-seeds/ (also by free email subscription).
Sermon Seeds
Weekly Theme:
The First Fruits of Salvation
Reflection:
Professor Carole Fontaine
Andover Newton Theological School
It is quite literally an "inspired" act to celebrate this year's entry into Eastertide--50 great days of renewal--with a dedication of our church's commitment to make manifest to all what we Christians have experienced and continue to experience in the culmination of the year's liturgical seasons. Now, at the time of new growth, we reflect on how God has grown us into full beings in Christ--taking us from trembling shepherds learning of a special birth but not knowing how it will impact their lives in any particular way, to members of a yearning crowd, following Jesus through Galilee as he heals, preaches, teaches, and casts out what is unclean and life-destroying from our midst. Now, the pain of the cruel Passover in Jerusalem is behind us; the struggle to understand how our beloved leader could have been murdered so horribly as a political criminal, how his followers could have scattered so quickly, and been so deeply bereft that they forgot all else...all this is over, and we begin to see the light. Finally. Firstly. The people of the Jesus Movement begin to understand that what was proclaimed in Third Isaiah, as the Jewish people awaited restoration to their land after a long Exile, is happening right in front of them NOW: God is really making a "new heaven and new earth," and we, all of us, then and now, are the lucky ones who get to see it, live it, and make it manifest.
It is clear that planet Earth requires a new reading of biblical theology in order to assist in the creation of God’s new heaven and new earth. Our problems go too deep to simply rehearse again stories of a flood or theories of predestination which rob us of our sense of urgency and make us feel that nothing can be done to heal our world. Fortunately, theologians from around the world have given us a set of principles by which to investigate the biblical witness about Creation. These "ecojustice" principles are:
1. Intrinsic worth: the universe, Earth and all its components have intrinsic worth/value.
2. Interconnectedness: Earth is a community of interconnected living things that are mutually dependent on each other for life and survival.
3. Voice: Earth is a subject capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice.
4. Purpose: the Universe, Earth and all its components, are part of a dynamic cosmic design within which each piece has a place in the overall goal of that design.
5. Mutual custodianship: Earth is a balanced and diverse domain where responsible custodians can function as partners, rather than rulers, to sustain a balanced and diverse Earth community.
6. Resistance: Earth and its components not only suffer from injustices at the hands of humans, but actively resist them in the struggle for justice. (1)
Throughout the Gospels, we have seen Jesus of Nazareth as a Shepherd, not just of people or flocks, but of Planet Earth. He is the Mortal One ("Son of Man," which originally meant a typical human who could die, before it ever became a special title for a chosen Messiah), living lightly from the land and rejecting the notion that Roman wealth and power were the source of meaning for people. When we fretted for worry over what might come next, he directed us to consider flowers and how they grew--naturally, beautifully, brilliantly, as God made them to do. When we wondered what to pack in order to follow him on his mission, he gently taught us that we need much less by way of material comfort than our acquisitive natures would have us believe. When it was time to eat, he told us all to share what we had, because there is always enough to go around--such is the abundance of the Good Land when we give up ideals of personal profit. When it was time to pray, he directed us to the wilderness, or to remove ourselves from the show that requires man-made temples in which to flaunt our faith in fine robes; instead, he taught us to sigh deeply, to move off into the silence of a garden or a mountain, and find God, as always, everywhere we turn.
It is a matter of amazement, generally, that such a humble and approachable Teacher could have been perceived as such a threat to the establishment of Roman exploitation of occupied countries. Jesus was likewise a goad to the local leaders of his own people in Judea who collaborated, hand in glove, with the Roman authorities. Together, these two groups conspired to denude the Promised Land of all its natural products on which the people lived, turning them instead into commodities from which Rome could profit--an easy harvest with no planting, a windfall with no bother--and if the people of Judea and Idumea starved, well--they weren't the chosen ones for whose benefit the Empire flourished and consumed land after land. It is no wonder that Jesus’ first ministry was in Galilee, a formerly neglected area under Roman Occupation, but one which had recently come under harsh policies of Romanization under the cagey Herod Antipas, described as a fox (no doubt meant to remind the listeners of the "little foxes" who steal and spoil the harvest of grapes in the Song of Songs). Fishermen were starving and growing poorer by the day, while their daily catch was appropriated, processed and salted to be sent on to Rome for consumption by the wealthy.
What must that have been like, to watch the result of your work, the livelihood you needed to feed your children and elders, wrenched away by overlords, as you were sent away to catch more, only to turn it over to the occupiers once again? Is it any wonder that when Jesus proclaimed "blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven," there was as much consternation and confusion as there were cheers? What COULD he have meant by that?? Was it a joke? Was it true? What did it mean? and How could one come to be part of that kingdom, especially if you found yourself at the very bottom of society’s heap?
The Kingdom, of course, was already much nearer than the people could imagine, requiring only a deep listening to the yearning of the human heart, and a reassessment of what mattered and what did not. Jesus was not speaking of a "place," especially not one in some distant sky, where all would be trouble-free; he was gesturing toward a "dimension" in which God's Presence is felt fully and continually in the moment, every moment. In such a frame of reference, it truly does NOT matter if one is rich or poor, as material goods come to mean less and less. In the dimension of God, the pain of one is shared by the other; the hunger of a child is experienced as one's own hunger, and through that new relatedness, hungers are fed, and goods are shared. The poor have always lived in such an existential kingdom, though usually it is bound up with want, care, and hopelessness: they have no plans for a better future; they are simply hoping to survive the day at hand.(2) So, asking for their daily bread on the day they need it is eminently sensible, and having the trust that on the next day, God will make those needs manageable, too, through Christian generosity and shared responsibility--well, just imagine what it would be like to live with so little stress of future worries, based on the trust in God and community we have experienced in our Now! It would be, on many levels, like having been resurrected from the horror of need, and the grind of acquisition. One would be free to simply be, existing in the moment of fellowship with God and humanity...and Earth.
This new "Christ-consciousness" which winds up changing everything has been well explored by poets of every faith during every age and epoch. D.H. Lawrence writes:
When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper. (3)
This new Heaven and new Earth is the creation which the ancient prophet longed for, and which the Easter Event creates in the new believing community. All is to exist in a harmonious whole, each according to its nature: there will be no hunger, no barrenness, no war, no illness, but rather a shared reality where each contributes and each is sustained. This balance of human and natural ecology is the exact antithesis of the consumer mentality that has invaded the modern world, teaching us to rape and trample Creation rather than celebrate it for the miracle it is. We look for unending expansion, endless goods to use up and toss aside when finished, as we stomp through a landscape already made pathetic and lifeless by our careless treatment of natural living systems. We have interpreted our Scriptures to focus on only ourselves as the "crown" of Creation: made in God's own image, we have taken that affirmation to mean NOT that we must be thoughtful caregivers of Creation, but that we are owners and users of lifeless matter whose only meaning is in our consumption of it.
But God has other ideas, and Creation itself witnesses against our careless use of it. We are part of Creation, subject to its same laws of increase and decrease, of intertwined dependency. As one generation yields to another, like one crop coming to harvest after another, we must use our Easter Dimension consciousness to return ourselves to proper relationship to all else. If the seas rise because we have heated the planet to boiling and launched a feedback loop which has changed our planet's living conditions, will we call it an "Act of God" when the coral reefs die, the crops fail, and the land is plagued by drought? When whole peoples are displaced because of flooding and climate degradation, when wars break out over scarce resources, when culture declines when the carbon fuels are all gone, will we wonder why God has "done" this to us as punishment, or will we finally realize then that in the web of connection, our bad acts against creation are all just waiting to catch up with us? Will we try to hop off to another planet to exploit, having spoiled this paradise for future generations? Or will we turn and repent, and discover that Easter is waiting for us with hope?
Peter says in Acts 10 that Jesus' death comes "by hanging him on a tree," the common way in which the Romans publically displayed the results of contradicting Rome's narrative of power. Just as we cut down trees for quick and cheap energy, and at the same time remove some of the powerful intertwining benefits provided to oxygen-breathing creatures by the primal rain forests, so Rome thought it could cut down trees of hope, and turn them into instruments of murder and torture. Yet, trees, all through the stories of our sacred texts, have carried a powerful symbolic meaning for the community. The first trees supply the human diet (Gen. 1:29), without benefit of sowing and reaping; the special trees in Eden are the source of infinite knowledge and endless life--unless appropriated by greedy and blind human hands that eat at the wrong time or for the wrong reason (Gen. 2:9, 17). Abraham meets angels beneath a great Oak tree (Gen. 18:1), and Moses learns that God is indeed a savior to the slave when he encounters a tree-like bush that burns with divine flame without dying of it! (Ex. 3:2) Prophetesses sit beneath their trees (Jdg. 5), giving counsel and leading the people; trees in Psalms are the very image of the Good Life, flourishing by streams of pure water (Ps. 1:3). Divine Wisdom, who scolds like a Mother or beckons like a Lover (Prov. 1:20-33, 3:13-17), is said to be a "tree of life" (Prov. 3:18) to all those who find her and hold fast to her sage teachings. Even Job, as he hungers for a death which can end his pain of living, believes that "there is hope for a tree" (Job 14:7-12), even if it is cut down: when the scent of water reaches it, it will revive and live again. And out of the burnt stump of the Tree of Jesse, the line of David of which Jesus is said to be the latest manifestation, comes finally a Messiah, someone anointed to open our eyes, and spare us from the fate of our silly, narrow goals and visions (Isa. 4:2, 11:1-2; Zech. 3:8, 6:12). In the final book of the Bible, Revelation, the pure River of Life flows from God's throne and beside it is the Tree of Life, once again producing every kind of fruit for healing and sustenance of the life of the world (Rev. 22:2-3). What the world meant for the death of hope, that Tree of the Cross, God instead transforms into the First Fruits of Life in Jesus. We need not fear death, or want: our future is secure as blessed creatures living in harmony with all that God has made and given us as gift, and on Easter, we finally come to realize this. The Gospel is quietly directing us to this happy ending, even in so dreadful a moment as when the women disciples find that Jesus' battered body is nowhere to be found: instead, Mary is questioned by a Gardener about her concerns, only to realize that it is indeed Jesus, her beloved Teacher, who addresses her. Death cannot conquer Love, however it tries: whatever the questions our lives may pose, Love is always the Answer, and the death of Jesus as the Innocent who in no way deserved it is our Emblem of Hope.
Is it too late for Planet Earth, then? Are the seas too hot, the glaciers too fragile, the drought too great? NO! It is not too late; it is never too late, says the God who Resurrects Life. Yes, even if we act now, as we surely must, there will be great change to the climate and planet into which we were born. This is the clear result of our arrogance, greed and sin, and much of it cannot be averted--but we must never name it as God's Will, or the Final Chapter of the Earth. If we begin now, and act with clear vision and relentless purpose, we may yet conserve much of this beautiful world we have inherited, and keep it verdant and fit for life. But our dedication must be complete and absolute, equal to the depth of the risks we face. We must be like the early Christians who took their message into every village, every country, and every place of power. Only a sustained commitment can turn back the disasters that we have unthinkingly unleashed upon the worlds we know, and there is no better group to take up this challenge than the people who know about Life. The Tree that symbolized death, in our eyes of faith, has been transformed into a vision of the Tree of Life, nourished by the healing, pure waters that feed all life on this planet. We have seen the First Fruits already; we share it amongst ourselves every time we come together to worship in the name of Jesus. Now, we must turn outward, and share it with the whole Planet in one, whole affirmation of God's New Heaven and New Earth. We can do this; God has promised us so. Good trees bear good fruit, says our Beloved Messiah; by our fruits, then, let the World come to know us as His.
Endnotes:
1. "Guiding Ecojustice Principles," pp. 38-53 in Readings from the Perspective of Earth, ed. Norman C. Habel (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000).
2. God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now, J. Dominic Crossan (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 97-123.
3. Earth Prayers from Around the World, ed. E. Roberts and E. Amidon (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), p. 101.
Our guest writer this week for Mission 4/1 Earth:
Dr. Carole R. Fontaine, the Taylor Professor of Biblical Theology and History at Andover Newton Theological School, is an internationally recognized feminist scholar in Hebrew Bible. She is the author of Smooth Words: Women, Proverbs and Performance in Biblical Wisdom, and is co-editor of the biblical "classic" text, A Feminist Companion to Reading the Bible: Approaches, Methods, Strategies as well as several volumes of the Feminist Companion to the Bible series. A long time Human Rights defender, Dr. Fontaine has served extensively on governing boards of Women’s Human Rights NGOs that study the impact of religion on women's status, rights and freedom, especially in Muslim theocracies. She currently works with a clandestine Human Rights network of prison mothers inside Iran, which supplies current data to the Department of Public Information at the United Nations (www.womenfreedomforum.com). She has written extensively on feminist theological topics, including disability. She is Religion Editor of the World Book Encyclopedia, and her translations and study notes have appeared in the HarperCollins Study Bible and the New American Bible, Revised Edition.
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For further reflection:
Carl Sandburg, 20th century:
"I was born in the morning of the world
so I know how morning looks....
Morning looks like any strong beautiful wanting.
There is your morning, my morning, everybody's morning."
Martin Luther, 16th century:
"Be thou comforted, little dog, Thou too in Resurrection shall have a little golden tail."
Carolyn Heilbrun, 20th century:
"Power consists in deciding which story shall be told."
Archbishop Oscar Romero, 20th century (two weeks before his assassination on March 24, 1980):
"I have often been threatened with death. If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality."
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Lectionary texts
Acts 10:34-43
Then Peter began to speak to them: "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."
or
Isaiah 65:17-25
For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it an infant
that lives but a few days,
or an old person
who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years
will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred
will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree
shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy
the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—
and their descendants as well.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
O give thanks to God, for God is good;
God's steadfast love endures forever!
Let Israel say,
"God's steadfast love endures forever."
God is my strength and my might;
God has become my salvation.
There are glad songs of victory
in the tents of the righteous:
"The right hand of God does valiantly;
the mighty hand of God is exalted;
the strong hand of God does valiantly."
I shall not die, but I shall live,
and recount the deeds of God.
God has punished me severely,
but God did not give me over to death.
Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to God.
This is the gate of God;
the righteous shall enter through it.
I thank you that you have answered me
and have become my salvation.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.
This is God's doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that God has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
or
Acts 10:34-43
Then Peter began to speak to them: "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
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Liturgical notes on the Readings
In ecumenical liturgical practice, there are normally three readings and one psalm at each Sunday service, in this order:
First Reading: Hebrew Scripture
Response: Psalm (or Canticle) from the Bible
Second Reading: Epistle (or Acts or Revelation)
Third Reading: Gospel
The first two lessons are normally read by laypeople, the Gospel by a Minister of the Word or a layperson. In Roman Catholic, Anglican and liturgical Protestant churches, it is uncommon for an ordained minister to read all of the lessons.
The psalm is not a reading but a congregational response following the lesson from Hebrew Scripture: it is normally sung with a refrain or recited by the congregation as poetry. Occasionally, a canticle is appointed in place of a psalm; it is sung or recited in the same way. The New Century Hymnal provides a complete liturgical psalter with refrains and music.
A hymn may be sung as an introduction to the proclamation of the Gospel.
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